Mom and Karin's China UPdate

Karin was able to call this morning at 6:00 am. It is 7:00 pm their time and they had just checked into a very very fancy hotel that had free WiFi. Her phone works on WiFi so this was the first chance to call.
They flew into Shanghai and mom was WAY too exhausted. The city has a lot of air pollution and is crowded with people and was dirty. Karin had a tough time finding something for mom to sit on and finally found some stairs. Shanghai has a population of over 25 million. No wonder Karin had trouble. Photo credit to the picture below goes to Unsplash.

After about 40 minutes they were taken to their hotel and were free to rest.

The next morning they visited the Shanghia museum. 

This is a massive museum housing over 140,000 pieces of artifacts.  After that they took a walk on The BUND, a landmark and well preserved walk of old Shanghai.  Next they went on Nanjing road which is the busiest shopping area probably across all of China.  I'm sure they didn't do much buying, Karin and mom don't LIKE to shop.  From Shanghai they flue to Yichang and joined the Yangtze River Cruise ship.  They passed through the Xiling Gorge which is the longest and historically the most dangerous one of the 3 gorges of the Yangtze River. The got to see the Three Gorges Dam. 

The river boat cruise was interesting. Mom and Karin were the only non-Chinese on the boat and Karin is a GIANT.  The others can't help but stare at her everywhere she goes.  They also happen to be the ONLY 2 people on this tour mom signed them up for, so they are really getting VIP treatment.  When the boat stops there are a lot of stairs to climb up to get up to the land, lots of stairs. At the very first stop, when mom stepped out to start climbing, Chinese men and women surrounded her and started grabbing at her. Karin figured out pretty quickly they were wanting to carry mom piggy back up the stairs by seeing another older Chinese lady being carried up the steps. When Karin saw what was happening she started pointing to herself, trying to get them to realize she would help mom. The men and women grabbing at mom thought Karin wanted them to carry her, the giant, and for some reason there was no takers!  Karin was able to take command of the situation and mom made it up with no problem. Too bad mom wouldn't let herself be carried up piggy back that would have made for some good pictures. They ended up going to a Buddah temple way up on the mountain, then took a gondola type thing that held 4 passengers even higher up. This never stopped moving so one had to jump on or off as it was moving and mom did fine even at that.  They had to cross a bridge to the next temple and if you fall when you cross over or back you are considered a BAD person.  Neither mom or Karin fell thank goodness. They reached what Karin called, 'Satan's temple' at the top of the mountain. It was full of grotesque statues. These were the torturers of the underworld. One of the punishments for disrespecting your mother was to be boiled in oil.
They made it all the way back to the boat, got on board and found out they were late for supper and that's when mom fell, tripping over the rug as she was trying to hurry to dinner. She is now sporting a fat lip.  The next stop was to visit a 1000 year old city, right next to that city was a 25 year old city. It was neat walking through and seeing both.  After the river cruise they went on the Bullet train for a 5 hour trip to their next stop having dinner on the train which was some kind of fish soup with greens. Mom didn't like the fish as it still had the bones in it and she doesn't like to crunch the bones with her teeth. Karin found a wonderful fruit, it has a rough orange skin, is very juicy and tastes like a big juicy grape crossed with a big juicy pear. The area the Bullet train traveled through is mountainous and beautiful, however it also goes through lots of tunnels. No good scenery through those. They have not seen any horses and maybe just 2 cows the entire 5 hours. Every bit of land going up and down the mountains is small terraced areas growing vegetables.  They have seen a lot of fish,  rabbit skulls and pigs feet in the food so that seems to be the main protein of the people. They will stay at this hotel for 2 nights before moving on to the next part of the tour. Hopefully we will get another update before they leave the fancy hotel with free WiFi.